Our European Friends

[Jerry_Atrick]

I think I mentioned somewhere that my neighour was unable to work for 2 weeks - he spent a few days in bed virtually not able to move. But, as he said, it is better than the alternative.

As I mentioned, I think I may have been given a placebo. I was tired yesterday - but that was a lack of sleep; I don't think it was the vaccine. Other than a tiny amount of intermittent soreness where the needle went in, that was it.. no other noticeable side effects. I think it's a numbers game.. and would you deny yourself a pennicilin shot for an infection because I would die if I were given one?

 

My bigger concern is longer term issues that may develop..

 

The other thing to remember is that the vaccine is not designed to stop you from getting it; it is designed to allow your body to fight it so should you catch it, you're symptoms are going to be mild, if at all, and you are not going to require hospitalisation. If the majority of the population get the jab, at least there will be beds available for those that didn't, so even then, it should greatly reduce the affect of those who aren't innoculated and do contract it as there will be more capacity to handle it. Of course, they will be at a higher risk of dying from it (so far all trials, regardless of efficacy have proven to stop the necessity of hospitalisation and have not resulted in death), but as they understand the disease better and can confidently provide the facilities, the death rate of those non-vaccinated should hopefully drop.

 

At the end of the day, it's a numbers game - for me, at my age, the potential of Covid to do serious damage was higher than the vaccine, so I took it.. But as with any numbers game, when you're number's up, you're number's up!

Edited March 22, 2021 by Jerry_Atrick

[octave]

6 hours ago, onetrack said:

My missus has a senior nurse as a friend, and she reports that a serious number of the nurses that have been vaccinated here, have had some really bad reactions - right down to seizures.

She reckons the authorities are keeping Mum about any of these serious side-effects because they just don't want anything to stop the rollout of the vaccine. I won't be lining up in a hurry to get the vaccine.

 

As of the 20 of March 448 Million people have been vaccinated world wide.  Even a tiny percentage of serious side affects would involve an enormous number of people.   I suspect it would be rather difficult to suppress this information.    Far from glossing over problems recently Europe suspended the vaccine of 20 people with blood clots.  This was from an abundance of caution and has been shown to be unconnected.   In this country so far the numbers vaccinated is quit small but in the US or Europe just about everyone would know many people who have been vaccinated.  I would expect that it would be very difficult to silence people who have had serious side effects and even more difficult their wider circle of friends.

 

It is often said that this vaccine is only a year old however the mRNA platform it is built is not so new.   Whilst there is a tiny chance that there could be long  term effects this is true of many of the drugs we take.  They do not study new drugs for 10 or 20 years before using them widely.    There are many reasons this vaccine seemed to be developed quickly.   Firstly a great financial incentive.  Some medications such as those for certain types of cancer have a smaller market.   As mentioned before a lot of the work in the development of the Covid vax had already been done.   Another thing that sped up the vaccine was that normally drug trials are done sequentially, phase 1 trials, then phase 2 then phase 3 then phase 4.  In the case of this vaccine these these trials were done in parallel.

 

I will be lining up for the vax for these reasons.

 

I am in a higher (slightly) risk group    The risk of getting covid far outweighs the risk of getting the vax.

Although at the moment I am living a life where I am unlikely to catch covid I am not willing to live this lifestyle for the rest of my life.  I do wish to travel.

From a pubic good  perspective, if we don't beat this now we will faced with variants that could be far worse.

Although we are doing well without a vaccine in this country we simply cannot keep the international borders closed indefinitely.

448 Million people have already had it. It would insanely difficult to conceal a high rate of serious side effect.

I believe it is the rational choice for me.

 

 

 

Should people be compelled to get vaccinated ABSOLUTELY NOT, it has to be personal choice however it is quite right to restrict international travel to people who have not been vaccinated.  There is nothing new in this, I have a scar from a smallpox vax I required in order to travel to Australia in 1964.   

 

Whilst I respect peoples right not to have it I believe that unfounded rumor's are not very helpful.    If I had decided that I was not going to get vaccinated I would be hoping that everyone else did get vaccinated which would give me some protection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

I think it is worth noting, that AZ is not (or is claiming it is not) profiting form the vaccine (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-astrazeneca-contra-idUSKBN2841C7). While the UK has agreed to underwrite any claims arising from issues from the AZ in the UK, I don't believe any other government is, sp part of the $3 per dose they charge will have to cover insurance, I would guess. And if the diose is $3 and it includes insurance, that is a fair bet that the insurers are comfy with it, too.

 

Once the critical threshold of people are vaccinated (and I am guesing there will be a requirement to continue vaccination on an ongoing basis due to variants), I don't have a problem with non-vaccinated people travelling.. They take the risk and my guess is their travel insurance premiums will skyrocket as a result. I would not allow anyone into the country who does not have valid and current health insruance that covers Covid - remember, the vaccine deosn;t stop you getting it; it helps you deal with it (well, it can make your immune system work so well against it, it seems you never got it).  Of course, anyone travelling into the country will put at risk those that have not taken the vaccine, but honestly, it's a decision they made. People should be made aware of the risk and then it is their decision.

 

A note on the variants - I am not sure how good the current vaccine is against the variants that have popped up. I hear there is a Thailand varianmt now, too.. .I have avoided the flu vaccine for years even though it was eligible for it here, as I don't want to admit I am ageing and to be honest, my immune system seems to be holding up despite the amount of red wine I throw at it..

[octave]

1 minute ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

I don't have a problem with non-vaccinated people travelling

 

I guess the point is should country like Australia allow international visitors from a country with high rates of covid if they are not vaccinated?     Would it not be prudent to insist that visitors to our country have had the requisite vaccinations?   

[spacesailor]

BUT !,

If All Australians Do get vaccinated, then we let the Hoards of unwashed, in to Please our airline company,

WE WILL still get it, then hope our immune system works good enough to save our lives.

BUT

what will the cost be to Australia with all those people taking SICKIES.

spacesailor

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, octave said:

 

I guess the point is should country like Australia allow international visitors from a country with high rates of covid if they are not vaccinated?     Would it not be prudent to insist that visitors to our country have had the requisite vaccinations?   

Try bringing unprocessed foods or other plant or animal material into Australia and see how far you get. International travellers are still members of the animal kingdom and can carry diseases just as well as bits of foodstuffs can. As a First World country we had tuberculosis nearly under control but in 2007 the incidence rate of TB in Australia was 5.4 cases per 100,000, one of the lowest rates in the world. However the absolute numbers of TB cases increased by 33% between 1998 and 2008, corresponding with Australia’s migration intake and increasing population. Were those migrants inoculated against TB?

[spacesailor]

And there,s the RUB !.

The government needs more (  ignorant/ uneducated to this government ) immigration to keep .them in office.

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

Actrually take the point that as the vaccines aren't 100% effective against catching the lurgy, allowing people without a vaccination in once critical mass of vaccinations has been achieved may have a detrimental effect. However, so far, the clinical trials are 100% effective at stopping those who do contract the lurgy from needign any form of hospitalisation or death (at least in trials, but apparently those numbers are borne in the wild as well). It doesn;t mean you won't get flu-like symptoms, but people have been catching flu and taking sickies for years.. another one to the mix.  And now that it appears the rhinovirus (flu) seems to dislodge Corona (but doesn't stop it coming back), it would be difficult to catch one and the other at the same time (well, if you got the flu, first): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56483445.

 

The point is, a sufficiently innoculated population may have the capacity to withstand the onslught from O/S carriers- we may get the cold or flu like symptoms from catching it where we do (remember a x% efficacy rate means that a weighted x% of the trial did not contract the virus while under study - but I don't think they were foced to be exposed to it). But this would be no different to the myriad of virusies and other nasties being brought in every day from o/s under normal conditions (do they still spray planes arriving in Aus - I can't recall them doing it the last few times I arrived).

 

The elephant in the room is the variants - at this stage, from memory, the vaccines seem to work against one of the variants, but not the others from what I recall reading.

 

BTW, the solution may be tests on arrival and quarantine from those countries that are problematic. However, if one person in a plane of c. 300 people is from that country (say in the last 14 days), do you quarantine the lot?

 

Many question to answer..

7 hours ago, old man emu said:

Try bringing unprocessed foods or other plant or animal material into Australia and see how far you get. International travellers are still members of the animal kingdom and can carry diseases just as well as bits of foodstuffs can.

Absolutely agree.. At least when the planes were sprayed, there was a modicum of an attempt to repel the nasties.

 

56 minutes ago, spacesailor said:

The government needs more (  ignorant/ uneducated to this government ) immigration to keep .them in office.

I thought Aus used a quota and points system and that, apart from refugees, migrants had to meeet all sorts of criteria (well, excpt for those on compassionate grounds). A key plank of BoJo's platform for election (so before Abbott came out) was to emulate Aussies immgration system.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I'm in no hurry either, but my reason is that i don't even know anybody with the disease. Any problems should come to light before i am up.  Onetrack, your wife etc need to get harder data than what you have reported.

 

[Old Koreelah]

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

...At least when the planes were sprayed, there was a modicum of an attempt to repel the nasties...

 When Ethiopia’s dignified Emperor Haile Salassie made a state visit to Australia, he stepped off his plane and wiped his shoes on a welcome mat of sanitizing chemicals.
If he could do it, so should everyone else. 

[pmccarthy]

David Frost once said that Ethipia's empower or was Haile Salassie, while other leaders were only slightly Salassie and most were not Salassie at all.

[Old Koreelah]

2 hours ago, pmccarthy said:

David Frost once said that Ethipia's empower or was Haile Salassie, while other leaders were only slightly Salassie and most were not Salassie at all.

A line probably written by his team, who went on to form Python.

 

Haile? Actually, compared to many from that region of Africa, the Emperor wasn’t very tall. 

His story is fascinating; born in the 19th Century, he modernized his country and fought the Italian invaders, strode the world stage as a champion of internationalism, but ended his days humiliated then murdered after a Marxist coup.

 

As Emperor he could not please all ethnic groups in his country and in later years they took their revenge on his statues and memorials.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Jerry, for many years i believed what you said about how young people behaved as they were taught in some way. I thought it was obvious that they were like a blank CD and what was written there as what mattered.

My changes came with knowing about sheep dogs. They are born good or bad. Then there was the revelation that a good psychologist could tell very early on  just which kids would go to jail.

So I no longer think that it is 100% nurture and 0% nature.

 

[Marty_d]

Very few things are 100% anything.

 

Listened to an interesting segment on the science show today by a young doctorate scientist studying the human biome, especially the effects of breast milk.  She's interested in non-communicable diseases, which in a modern society account for 70% of deaths.  (Heart disease, irritable bowel, etc).

She was saying that your propensity to get (or not get) these diseases is pretty much set by the time you're 3 or 4.  Factors affecting it include how you were delivered, whether or not you were breastfed, whether there were pets in the house, your early childhood environment etc.  So a kid in the womb is like a blank slate as far as bacteria are concerned; as soon as they're being born they are flooded with all sorts of bacteria, as she put it, "wanting to settle down in your nice warm innards".  The trick is to encourage the right sorts of bacteria in order to prevent those diseases 80 or 90 years down the track.

 

Edited March 24, 2021 by Marty_d

[willedoo]

I wonder how that would pan out with the difference in upbringing between a farm kid and a city kid. Farm kids get plenty of animal poo and bacteria, so would get a different mix of bugs than their city cousins.

[Marty_d]

I'm hoping you're right - our kids are being brought up on a bit of land and probably all stuck various animal poo in their gob as toddlers.  

Plus always had dogs.

[Old Koreelah]

1 hour ago, willedoo said:

I wonder how that would pan out with the difference in upbringing between a farm kid and a city kid. Farm kids get plenty of animal poo and bacteria, so would get a different mix of bugs than their city cousins.

Growing up barefoot on our little farm I got plenty of inflamed cuts and scratches but even at that tender age considered them good training for my immune system.

[Old Koreelah]

5 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

...Then there was the revelation that a good psychologist could tell very early on  just which kids would go to jail.

So I no longer think that it is 100% nurture and 0% nature.

A huge amount of useful data has come from this fascinating research project in NZ:

 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/02/two-psychologists-followed-1000-new-zealanders-decades-here-s-what-they-found-about-how

 

https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/science/humans/article/2016/05/24/exceptional-scientific-study-thats-been-going-over-40-years

[spacesailor]

Old K

Not just Nature or Nurture,

BUT

Social stigma of being at the bottom of the barrel.

All the people running around helping the flood victims, But I see ONE is Not getting any help.

Just a crumb on the social roster ( for a better word ), No insurance, fetch and fill his own sandbags, 

You'd think he / family were lepers. only a three picture bit on facbuk, with their cars under water  .

Its only one that I know about but suspect more of the poorer people, will be in the same ( l won't say BOAT ) water.

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

Well, the plot thickens on an ananymous Aussie government source claiming 3.1m doses of AZ from the EU desitned for Australia have been blocked. The EU says it hasn't blocked any, but has some shipments under review; An anonymous EU source says the 3.1m destined for Aus is not one of them.

 

However, there is speculation that the actions of the EU are causing AZ to be holding shipments back. It's a but murky at the momenht, but had the EU taken a more collaborative approach, they may well have had their international "partners" be accommodating to help with the roll out within the EU as well as not not styming the roll out elsewhere too adversly..

 

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-eu-blocks-3-1-093635762.html

 

[Marty_d]

I heard ScoMo on the radio today talking about it.   Not really sure what the big deal is.  AZ is being manufactured by CSL here and apparently they're producing 800k doses a week now, and anticipate improvements pushing them over 1M per week.  

So the 3.1 missing doses from Europe are 3 weeks worth for a country with bugger all active cases.  Is it worth the diplomatic fuss?

[Jerry_Atrick]

The news here omitted tha fact - in fact the Reuters article hinted that production was only ramping up.

 

Yes, I agree that with a country that has as few cases as Aus, it's nto important, except if Aus would sooner rather than later want to get to some semblance of normality from the international perspective (which I have a vested interest in happening)..

 

Also, if this was done collaboratively, then fine.. But you have a suprational screaming and yelling that the UK is acting illegally in contravention to the Brexit by not implementing strict "border" controls which were slowing goods down so the supermarket shelves were emptying, but at the same time taking unilateral and illegal (in international law) actions or applying such pressure as to bring about that result, well, it is not the institution it holds out to be.

 

Yes, the Northern Irish may have only had to make do without some of their usual foods and would not have starved, so the comparison in terms of urgnency against the pandemic provides a different dimension. However, I am sure Australia, and even the UK, would have been willing to compromise (or in the case of Australia, probably give up most, if not all of their allocation from AZ) to help out. But by acting unilaterally, the EU have shown themselves to be as insular as the yanks and can't be trusted when other crises hit.

[spacesailor]

AND

THE Big lie is " we will be Safe after vaccination " !.

We will Still get the WueFlue and be off work,  sick in bed.

Losing the country And ourselves heaps of money.

Hopefully not defaulting on the mortgage. 

One dirty person bringing it in, then hundreds go down sick, 

BUT

How sick will we be ?.

spacesailor

[nomadpete]

In answer to Spacey,

The vaccination means that WHEN I catch this new virus, I might not die.

Without it I probably will.

[spacesailor]

ALL my grandkids think it,s 'the magic bullet ' and they won,t get the virus !.

Who were Our friends in 1940,

Russia, China and the USA aren,t European !.

spacesailor